Abstract

This study based on Igbo language and literature – especially proverbs and folktales – focuses on the use of space, the way it is distributed, organised and managed. It reveals a highly structured use of a communal space organised around the person, considered as member of the group. Traditions, which protect the communal space and ensure its being handed down from one generation to the next, equally give everyone an individual share in it. This space is both versatile and highly partitioned, closely managed and distributed according to age, gender and the sons’ rank in the family. Folktales describe the human world, represented by the village where life revolves around the house and the market, as close to that of the spirits, with the forest and the stream acting as boundaries. Humans and spirits share this space on the understanding that men are only managing it for a while as representatives of their family